The Museo della Specola is housed in some of the rooms of the XVIIIth-century tower - built onto Palazzo Poggi , present seat of the University of Bologna - which in the XVIIIth and XIXth centuries were mainly given over to astronomical observation. The museum is today subdivided in three rooms: the Meridian Room , the Globe Room , and the Turret Room , situated on the first, third and fourth floor of the tower respectively. The same tower also houses the Department of Astronomy of the University and the Astronomical Observatory.
The materials exhibited in the museum (and those that could not be exhibited for lack of space, owing to cohabitation with the above-mentioned bodies, and restoration requirements) come mostly from the collection of astronomical instruments of the Marsili Observatory, transferred to the Specola of the Istituto delle Scienze at the beginning of the XVIIIth century. The astronomer at the time was also given charge of the Military Room of the Institute and a range of topographical and geographical duties; shortly after, the material from the Nautical Room was also moved in the Specola , and then taken to other rooms of the Rectorate. Still in the first half of the XVIIIth century, the collection donated to the Bolognese Senate in the previous century by the marquis Ferdinando Cospi - encyclopedic collection comprising " singolari manifatture dell'Arte " and " opere curiose della natura " and including animal and vegetative reports, arms, mathematical and astronomical instruments, works of art and other hand-made articles - was transferred to the Istituto delle Scienze on the orders of cardinal Prospero Lambertini and split up among the various rooms , including the astronomical ones.
The exhibition I materiali dell'Istituto delle Scienze , organized by the University of Bologna in 1979, provided the occasion for initiating the restoration of a large part of the astronomical instruments and the Meridian Room; subsequently, in 1985 and 1989, with recovery and restoration of the material (scattered about the cellars and attics of the tower) having gone ahead, the other two rooms were opened to the public. The Museo della Specola thus reflects the development and evolution of astronomical instruments over more than a century, from the beginning of the XVIIIth to well into the XIXth century.
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The Museo della Specola is housed in some of the rooms of the XVIIIth-century tower - built onto Palazzo Poggi , present seat of the University of Bologna - which in the XVIIIth and XIXth centuries were mainly given over to astronomical observation. The museum is today subdivided in three rooms: the Meridian Room , the Globe Room , and the Turret Room , situated on the first, third and fourth floor of the tower respectively. 
The exhibition I materiali dell'Istituto delle Scienze , organized by the University of Bologna in 1979, provided the occasion for initiating the restoration of a large part of the astronomical instruments and the Meridian Room; subsequently, in 1985 and 1989, with recovery and restoration of the material (scattered about the cellars and attics of the tower) having gone ahead, the other two rooms were opened to the public. 
